ANTONIO ROSMINI SERBATI

Antonio Rosmini Serbati (1797-1858) was a prolific author whose most important works include “The Five Wounds of the Holy Church” (1848), “The Constitution According to Social Justice” (1848), “The New Essay on the Origin of Ideas” (1830), “Principles of Moral Science” (1831), “Philosophy of Morals” (1837), “Philosophy of Politics” (1839), “Philosophy of Law” (1841-1845), and “Theodicy” (1845).

Rosmini’s philosophical system embraces various fields and is interested in ontology, epistemology, ethics, politics, and law. He reaffirms the validity of Christian philosophy and criticizes the subjective and empirical tendencies of modern thought, which he considers negative for their potential political and moral consequences.

The idea of Being becomes central in Rosmini’s philosophy, which not only establishes the objectivity of knowledge but also morality. For Rosmini, knowledge cannot only come from sensory experience, as claimed by empiricism and sensationalism, nor can it arise solely from the functions and activities of the subject, as claimed by Kant. Knowledge is founded on something independent of the mind, namely the idea of Being, which the mind grasps but cannot impose.

The idea of Being is the true form of all knowledge and differs from Kantian forms because it is unique and simple, not multiple like categories, and because it is an immediate and intuitive object of the mind, not the product of its activity.

The idea of Being is the light through which our mind thinks and knows and, for this reason, differs from all other ideas, which are instead formed by our mind and are the result of a judgment. The idea of Being, as examined up to this point, has a merely formal character with epistemological implications that need to be distinguished from ontological and theological ones.

In the idea of Being, Being is grasped only ideally, not really. This means that the idea derives from God, in fact, it is the presence of God in our mind. Through the idea of God, we can affirm that God is, but we cannot know how God is, nor can we have direct and full experience of Him.

In the human experience of cognitive activity, the fundamental feeling is the one that allows us to feel that life is within us, that makes us perceive our body as identical to ourselves, and indissolubly united to our spirit. For these reasons, the fundamental feeling occupies an intermediate place between the activity of our soul and the passivity of our senses.

Furthermore, the idea of Being establishes an objective morality. Being is not only the founding epistemological and ontological principle but also the founding moral principle. This is because good and Being coincide; they are the same thing. Everything is good to the extent that it participates in Being. In this context, the will is good if it recognizes the true order revealed by intelligence, an order in which things depend on God and tend, each one of them, to reach the perfection assigned to them.